Hi all,
we're using PVE and PBS for VMs and their backups, mostly with success, also with writing them to tapes. However, we also have a lot (100-200TB/year) of static data that we need to archive on tape. So far, we've used proxmox-backup-client to piecewise create archives and put them into the PBS datastore, then they are copied to tape and the "snapshots" removed. This works, but is not very convenient. It would be much easier and faster if we could just write such data directly from the storage server to tape. I know that this has been asked for a few times in the past[1-4], but maybe things have changed.
My questions:
[2] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/tape-drives-in-pve-instead-of-pbs.128536/
[3] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/i...les-from-pbs-in-addition-to-datastore.132786/
[4] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/back-up-local-files-to-tape.138554/
Thanks!
we're using PVE and PBS for VMs and their backups, mostly with success, also with writing them to tapes. However, we also have a lot (100-200TB/year) of static data that we need to archive on tape. So far, we've used proxmox-backup-client to piecewise create archives and put them into the PBS datastore, then they are copied to tape and the "snapshots" removed. This works, but is not very convenient. It would be much easier and faster if we could just write such data directly from the storage server to tape. I know that this has been asked for a few times in the past[1-4], but maybe things have changed.
My questions:
- Is it still true that PBS doesn't support any way to directly write files to tape without going through the datastore? Not even by talking directly to the userspace tape driver?
- If not, are there any plans to add such functionality, given that it's asked for on a regular basis?
- Alternatively, we could also perform those backups using separate software (but the same library/drive), e.g. LTFS. However, this would need us to implement proper locking, so that PBS and LTFS tape access don't interfere. PBS already uses a locking mechanism for the tape drive, so would it be possible to simply guard those "foreign" accesses with a lock file or something? Digging through the code, is it
that needs to be created to be safe?Code:
/var/run/proxmox-backup/drive-lock/dev-tape-by\x2did-scsi\x2dXXXXXXX\x2dsg
[2] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/tape-drives-in-pve-instead-of-pbs.128536/
[3] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/i...les-from-pbs-in-addition-to-datastore.132786/
[4] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/back-up-local-files-to-tape.138554/
Thanks!